It’s not super tall at around 2-3 feet, but heck it seems amazing me that a sunflower could bloom at all in mid-December.

This flower is a ‘volunteer’ from a seed from a parental sunflower that bloomed nearby in my garden this past summer. I left some of the sunflowers that I grew then to go to seed and the seeds were eaten by a whole bunch of different critters. Some buried the seeds for later and this flower is likely the result of that stockpiling by squirrels and other animals.

A sunflower blooming unexpectedly in winter is pretty cool.

A few weeks ago the trees around here were showing their glory of fall colors. One of the most amazing types here to put on such a show is the sumac. I think they are staghorn sumac that someone planted in the neighborhood probably around 20 years ago.

There were a few in our neighborhood that literally looked on fire. I took a picture of one of them around Thanksgiving time and you can see what a beauty it was. Now today after a series of storms it has pretty much no leaves left.

Returning to my garden, going back a few more weeks I noticed some interesting super tiny mushrooms sprouting up. Poisonous but pretty! I was told that these are Leucocoprinus Birnbaumii.